Legal Advocacy against Racist Violence in Spain

Background
Racial discrimination and racist violence remain severely under-addressed in Spain, even as discriminatory practices against racial and ethnic minorities by both private citizens and public agencies are better documented.

The behavior of law enforcement officers is especially troubling. Spanish police and security personnel have been widely criticized for discriminatory identity checks, insulting and abusive speech, and ill-treatment and violence towards ethnic minorities and people of non-Spanish descent. These agents benefit from a system of impunity, which protects those accused of racially-motivated violence. Effective investigations of racially-motivated violence are rare (especially where the accused perpetrator(s) are state agents themselves), and victims who do bring complaints are often the targets of harassment and countercharges. Fear or reprisals often make victims of racist violence unwilling or unable to make complaints. When they do come forward, they must contend with inadequate legal aid, bias and widespread ignorance of applicable law on the part of judicial authorities.

As a result, racially-motivated violence is insufficiently and inadequately reported. Many affected communities lack both experience in conceptualizing and identifying concrete manifestations of racial/ethnic discrimination, and a tradition of utilizing the legal system to combat racially-motivated violence and other forms of discrimination.

Objectives
The project on Legal Advocacy Against Racist Violence in Spain will document, report upon, and pursue legal remedies for racist violence. Project activities will support local advocates’ efforts to utilize existing but rarely applied anti-discrimination law in their legal challenges to racially-motivated violence, such as Spanish legislation authorizing sentencing enhancements for racially-motivated violence, and the Spanish transposition of the EU Race Directive. The project will build Spanish lawyers’ capacity to utilize international and regional human rights laws and jurisprudence in their domestic advocacy. Domestic anti-discrimination and migration/refugee NGOs as well as individual lawyers and advocates will be project partners.

The project’s objectives are:

• to systematically document cases of racially-motivated violence against racial/ethnic minorities, especially where there has been a failure by state agencies to investigate the racism/racist motivation behind the crimes, where the violent acts have been perpetrated by police and/or other state agents, and where the courts have failed to apply racism/racial motivation as an aggravating factor
• to increase the number of formal complaints filed by victims of racially-motivated violence
• to improve domestic courts’ application of racism/racial discrimination as an aggravating factor in applicable cases
• to build capacity of domestic attorneys to utilize regional and international human rights and anti-discrimination jurisprudence in bringing racial discrimination cases to domestic courts, and to pursue remedies, where appropriate, in regional and international fora
• to provide technical and substantive assistance to NGOs and civil society groups lobbying for complete and effective implementation of the EU Race Directive, particularly as regards to the establishment of a specialized monitoring body.

Activities

National Conference
A broad cross-section of Spanish and international NGOs working with affected minority and/or immigrant groups will meet in Madrid in mid November 2004. The conference will address the methodology for case documentation of racially-motivated violence; comparative strategies for proving discrimination and racially-motivated violence; case selection, litigation strategy, and acceptable evidentiary proof for pursuing cases in national and regional courts; existing regional anti-discrimination jurisprudence.

Documentation of Racially-Motivated Violence
Documentation strategies will be based on existing good practices for proving discrimination, particularly those used in other European countries.

The documentation effort will include, for specific cases, incidents of racist verbal abuse, serious physical injury, and/or failure of investigative authorities to carry out an effective investigation of the racial motivation and/or to apply the penal code’s sentencing enhancement for discriminatory motive of a crime, even though such enhancement is clearly warranted by the facts. These cases should reflect the national, ethnic, gender, and geographic diversity of the victims. Documentation activities will systematically document the response of the police/security and judicial sectors in each case.

Report on Racial Violence in Spain
Project partners will produce a report on the incidence of racial violence in Spain and the capacity of the judicial system to respond.
Publication of the report will provide the occasion for further advocacy efforts, such as press conferences or colloquia. Potential audiences for the report include the Spanish government, the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the UN human rights mechanisms.

Targeted Litigation
Certain documented cases will be selected in accordance with criteria to be developed by the project. Those that are recent enough to permit the pursuit of legal remedies, have willing plaintiffs, and raise important legal issues will be brought before domestic courts, regional courts, and international audiences, using all appropriate legal foundations, including Spanish legislation, the EU Race Directive, European Court of Human Rights Jurisprudence, and other international legal norms.

Partners
The Justice Initiative will partner with Spain’s leading anti-discrimination and migrant rights organizations as well as Women's Link Worldwide, an international NGO that conducted substantial research into the situation of migrants and refugees in Spain, particularly women migrants and women. All project partners will collaborate in the development of a documentation methodology, legal advocacy, and publicity.